getting files from busted Mac

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Hi there, I’ve busted my old macbook ☹ and the only piece that survived is the hard drive. I purchased cables and hooked up the HD to the new macbook that I just bought. But somehow I cannot see some of the files on the old hard drive, for instance the photos that were only saved in iphoto I cannot find on HD, or files that were saved on desktop I cannot find either. Does any one know how can I retrieve those files/pictures from the old HD without bringing it to the apple store.

Cheers!
 

cwa107


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Your iPhoto Library is self-contained. You'll find it within your home folder (Macintosh HD/<your name>/Pictures/iPhoto Library). You should be able to just bring it over to the new Mac and put it in place of the new (empty) iPhoto Library.

Your desktop data should be stored in Macintosh HD/<your name>/Desktop.
 
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thanks very much, I'll try that :)
 
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MacBook Pro | iMac(2.1 G5) | MacBook(2.16 C2D) | MacMini (1.67 CD) | iPhone 4 | iPad (3rd Gen)
You can also boot from the old HDD by pressing and holding the "alt"(option key) during the startup. From there you can copy anything you want to the new HDD. The Carbon Copy Cloner is a nice free app you can use for that.
 
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I cannot access Macintosh HD/<your name>/Pictures/iPhoto Library, the file <my name> is empty :/
Tried CCC and no luck either, my name folder is empty, the second user's name and files are there but mine (admins) are not. The boot at the startup give only the black screen that looks like DOS have no idea what to do with it? Any other suggestions? thank you
 
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Currently 13" Late 2010 MBA, 4GB/128GB; Early 2011 13" MBP, dual core i7 2.7ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb hd
Out of curiosity, were you running FileVault?
 

cwa107


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Yes, I was

That would be why you're having trouble. You need to authenticate in order to unlock that data.

Try booting from that drive (no guarantees that it will work since the drivers installed are for the older machine).

You should be able to do this by shutting your new machine down, turning it back on and holding the Option key. You should see the external drive appear as a boot option after 30 seconds or so. Click on it and it should (hopefully) boot the system from the drive. Once you sign in using your credentials, those files should unlock and then I would recommend turning off FileVault until you can offload all of your data.
 
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Currently 13" Late 2010 MBA, 4GB/128GB; Early 2011 13" MBP, dual core i7 2.7ghz, 4gb ram, 500gb hd
FileVault stores your data in an encrypted disk image inside your home folder. Browse to your home folder, and you should have a username.sparsebundle file. If you double-click it, you should be prompted to enter your password to mount the image. Once mounted, you should be able to copy contents to an external drive or some other media to transfer it over.

Also, check out instructions at Repairing a FileVault-protected Home folder.
 
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thanks guys for your help!!! got all my files back :)
 

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